is this a real threat? if a system/company decides to replace a human with something that is less capable wouldn't that just result in it becoming irrelevant/bankrupt as it is replaced by other companies doing the same thing the more efficient (and in this case traditional) way?
Consumers will absolutely buy worse buy cheaper products/services.
There are already active discussions about AI being used in government for “efficiency” reasons.
would be interesting to see what examples there are of this in recent history
While there is undoubtedly a lot of hype around these tools right now, that hype is based on a pretty major leap in technology that has fundamentally altered the landscape going forward. There are some great use cases that legitimize some of the hype.
As far as concrete examples, see the sibling comment with the anecdote regarding health insurance denial. There are also portions of the tech industry focused on rolling these tools out in business environments. They're publicly reporting their earnings, and discussing the role AI is playing in major business deals.
Look at players like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Atlassian, etc. They're all rapidly rolling out various AI capabilities into their existing customer bases. They have giant sales forces all actively pushing these capabilities. They also sell to governments. Hype or not, it adds up to real world outcomes.
Public statements by Musk about his intention to use AI also come to mind, and he's repeatedly shown a willingness to break things in the pursuit of his goals.
the counterpoint to this (which i guess is the tenet of the original comment?) is that hype can shadow good judgement for a short period of time?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Y7QPXzDmloI?embeds_referring_...
If you haven't already signed away your right to sue with an arbitration clause.